Many financial analysts and other financial professionals create and maintain financial models to describe the financial condition of corporations or other business entities across the economy. The models include collections of equations that operate on raw or intermediate financial data (e.g., gross sales, overhead expenses, etc.) to generate values describing the business entities (e.g., earnings, net profit, etc.). Financial analysts create various reports based on the results of the models such as, for example, forecasts, other analysis, etc., The reports are distributed to clients and/or the public at large, who often consider them to determine investment strategies.
The financial models discussed above are often computer-implemented. For example, a financial model, or set thereof, may be implemented by a taxonomy expressed in any suitable computer language or format such as, for example, Extensible Markup Language (XML), Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The taxonomy may define the inputs, outputs and/or intermediate values of the model and the relationships therebetween. For example, a taxonomy may provide guidelines that allow a computer to receive a set of input values, identify the input values based on the quantities that they represent, and calculate values describing business entities based on the input values. In this way, financial analysts may quickly and efficiently apply a financial model to different sets of input data.
Taxonomies implementing financial models are changed from time-to-time for various reasons (e.g., regulatory changes, accounting practice changes, error correction, etc.). Due to the complexity of most financial models and taxonomies, it is often unclear how a small change to correct an error or comply with a government regulation will affect the taxonomy, or the results of the financial model. If results of the financial model change, and those results were the basis of a financial analyst's report, then the financial analyst is required by various government regulations to issue an update to the report that reflects the new results. Accordingly, it is necessary to analyze changes in a taxonomy to determine how the changes affect the output (e.g., by comparing the original taxonomy to the modified taxonomy).
Existing methods for comparing taxonomies are slow, inefficient and unreliable. The existing methods involve downloading taxonomies from separate databases or other components to a single computer over a network. The single computer then compares the taxonomies item-by-item. This method takes a considerable amount of time, as downloading the two taxonomies involves transmitting a large amount of data and can create and/or contribute to network bottlenecks. During transmission delays, no comparison can take place, and therefore, the process is extended. Also, due to the potential transmission delays and the complexity of the operation, the single computer is often prone to crashing. When the single computer crashes, the comparison is lost and must be restarted.